The Head Start Program is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. The program's services and resources are designed to foster stable family relationships, enhance children's physical and emotional well-being, and establish an environment to develop strong cognitive skills. The transition from preschool to elementary school imposes diverse developmental challenges that include requiring the children to engage successfully with their peers outside of the family network, adjust to the space of a classroom, and meet the expectations the school setting provides.

Launched in 1965 by its creator and first director Jule Sugarman, Head Start was originally conceived as a catch-up summer school program that would teach low-income children in a few weeks what they needed to know to start elementary school. The Head Start Act of 1981 expanded the program.The program was further revised when it was reauthorized in December, 2007. Head Start is one of the longest-running programs to address systemic poverty in the United States. As of late 2005, more than 22 million pre-school aged children had participated. Since 2000, the program's effectiveness has been debated in a range of studies: some have claimed that its successes are obvious, others have claimed that it produces both substantial successes and substantial failures, and yet others have claimed that its failures are sufficient to warrant its abolition.

Head Start began as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society campaign. Its justification came from the President's Council of Economic Advisors, whose staff advanced the concept of investment in education during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The historical context of Head Start's origins is significant. Johnson started the War on Poverty shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy. The assassination shook the nation, and Johnson seized the opportunity to gain the nation's trust by achieving a string of important legislative victories during the subsequent months. Following the assassination, Johnson received a briefing from Walter Heller, who informed Johnson of the poverty program that Kennedy and former presidents always saw as an issue. Since Johnson had worked with poverty children before, he considered the program close to his heart and was determined to find money to help support it.

In fiscal year 1994, the Early Head Start program was established to serve children from birth to three years of age reflecting evidence that these years are critical to children's development. Programs are administered locally by nonprofit organizations and local education agencies such as school systems.

TRIBAL HEAD START RECIPIENTS QUALIFY FOR LIFELINE SERVICE